When Darkness Comes
by lucawindmover
Summary: Sequel to Moving in the Dark...When members of the Beacon Hills pack start going missing, Scott McCall and his pack must come face to face with a new danger, one that might tear the group apart from the inside out...(Multiple pairings)
1. Chapter 1

When Darkness Comes

Lucawindmover

Chapter One

"A New Tomorrow"

" _Had a dream of a new tomorrow, If you don't get it, then you don't get it." Five for Fighting "What If"_

* * *

Scott McCall groaned as he slapped blindly with his right hand, trying to find and silence his ringing phone without having to open his eyes. He managed to knock the device off his side table and onto the floor. With a muttered curse, he disentangled himself from the other warm body in the bed and leaned over to retrieve the now silent phone.

"Who the hell is calling you?" Cora Hale grumbled, grinding her knuckles into her sleep deprived eyes. "I thought everyone knew we were napping."

Scott squinted at his screen. "It's my dad."

"That's just great," she muttered. "The one person who has no clue we were up all night with the full moon."

Scott stood and carried the phone out to the hallway, opting to return the call without Cora's running commentary audible to his father.

Rafael McCall answered on the third ring. "Hello?"

"Hey Dad. Did you need something?" Scott asked, hoping to keep the conversation short. Recovering from the full moon required more energy now that he regularly became a real wolf. And although he, Cora, Isaac, Ethan, and Derek had spent the night in the Beacon Hills Preserve, giving in to the pull of the full moon, none of the students missed school this morning. Thankfully it was Friday, thus the attempt at an afternoon nap.

Agent McCall sounded slightly annoyed at his son's brusque greeting. "I wanted to confirm dinner for tonight," his dad said in a clipped tone. "You always seem to have some last minute reason for cancelling on me and I wanted to know for sure before I make a reservation."

Scott closed his eyes and clenched his fist as he heard Cora curse loudly from the bedroom. She must have heard Rafael's side of the conversation. "Would you believe me if I said I forgot about dinner?"

"I'd say that's more believable than you remembering, actually."

Scott glanced up to the clock in the hallway reading half after four and sighed. "What time were you thinking?"

" _Don't you do it, Scott McCall_ ," Cora hissed from the bedroom.

At the same time, Rafael asked, "How about seven? At Luigi's?"

Scott held his hand over the mouthpiece for a moment, answering Cora first with a muttered, " _We have to_ ," before addressing his father with, "Yeah, I guess that'll work. We can be there by then."

"We?" his father asked. "Does this mean I'm going to finally meet this elusive girlfriend of yours?"

 _Mate_ , Scott silently corrected him. He and Cora were mates, the werewolf equivalent of marriage but without the human ability to undo it. Divorce didn't exist for mates but Scott wouldn't have wanted one anyway. It didn't matter to him that he and Cora mated each other by accident. Sure, the two of them didn't always get along or agree on topics, such as keeping his father in the dark about the werewolf aspects of their lives. She believed they didn't have time to deal with people who didn't know their secrets. Scott wasn't in any hurry to pull his father into the danger associated with possessing knowledge of those secrets.

"Yeah, I'll see if I can get her to come," Scott answered. "I mean, if it's okay with you."

"If it gets you to dinner, I wouldn't even care if you brought Stiles."

"You don't mean that."

"Obviously."

Scott cracked a half-smile against his will, confirmed they would indeed attempt to make it, and ended the call. Without his father consuming half his attention, he could hear Cora grinding her teeth back in the bedroom.

"Absolutely not," Cora said from the bed as Scott slumped against the door frame.

"We need to go," Scott replied. "He's my dad."

"He could be the king of the country for all I care. It's still a no."

"The president?" he asked, pushing away from the doorway.

Cora rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "Whatever. You know what I mean."

Scott couldn't help himself. He grinned. He loved it when she was mildly annoyed with him. She felt the same way, generally. Their bickering had almost become foreplay, to the annoyance of basically everyone who knew them.

"What if I could convince you?"

Cora's eyes snapped in his direction at the tone of voice with which he asked the question. He could already hear the increased stutter of her heart as the head rose in her cheeks. Her expression hadn't changed but everything else about her, including her over-powering scent, had definitely picked up on what he had in mind.

"There's nothing you could say that'll change my mind," she answered stubbornly even though they both knew her words were more or less useless at this point.

Scott prowled to the foot of the bed, his eyes dark and his smile feral. "I didn't say anything about talking, did I?"

Cora swallowed visibly. Her hands clenched the fabric of her shirt as she continued her obstinate refusal to acquiesce to his request. She closed her eyes as he began a slow crawl up the bed, pausing to lay lingering kisses on each of her knees and the tops of her black denim-clad thighs. He straddled her legs, keeping most of his weight off her as he peeled her arms away from her body. After placing kisses on the palms of each of her hands, he lightly bit the soft skin at her wrist, causing her eyes to blaze open, flashing gold once before darkening with a furrow of her brow.

"You don't play fair," she accused, breathily.

Scott grinned against her wrist, dragging his lips up her forearm to the tender flesh at the inside of her elbow. "I'm not playing," he replied. "We need to go to dinner tonight."

Cora shook her head but Scott recognized the gesture as her giving him permission. She would go but she wouldn't be happy about it. He wondered for a moment if maybe it would be better to let her stay home, rather than allowing her to terrorize his father with her dark brooding all night. But then Cora changed the dynamic of the situation by rolling them, pinning him to the bed with her tiny frame and intense glare.

"Rules."

"Go on."

She leaned forward, softly biting the space beneath his chin where the stubble of his face met the silky skin of his neck. Scott groaned.

"You don't call me your girlfriend," she all but growled against his skin. Cora stubbornly opposed anyone using the term to describe her. Scott couldn't speak so he nodded instead. "And no lying. If your dad asks a question, promise me you'll tell him the truth."

He didn't want to promise. The subjects Scott couldn't be honest with his father about yet numbered in the double-digits. He couldn't admit to the man that his girlfriend lived with him, sharing a bed every night. He couldn't tell his father the reason he didn't get any sleep last night was because he became a literal wolf and spent the evening running through the woods underneath a full moon, hunting deer and rabbits and other things that went bump in the night. He didn't want to tell him the rest of the members of the ever-growing household were almost all werewolves, that Isaac, Derek, and Ethan all actually lived at the house now rather than just hanging out.

But Cora moved on to tug his earlobe between her lips and he was powerless to protest. It did no good for him to complain. He had started the negotiations this way. It was only fair for Cora to turn the tables on him.

Either she didn't notice he hadn't actually answered or she hadn't expected a response because the two of them quickly lost track of what they were supposed to be arguing about. Somewhere between Cora pulling off her shirt and Scott slipping between her thighs, he realized their tendency to turn arguments into sex was probably not healthy. He intended to talk to her about this sometime. However, as her fingernails bit into his back and her heels interlocked behind his waist, he lost his ability to speak.

* * *

"So you're telling me the great Lydia Martin has something she actually doesn't know?" Stiles Stilinski snarked to his girlfriend as he flipped another few pages in his U.S. government textbook, searching for the answer to the next question on his take-home test.

He looked up from his book in time to catch her smothering a yawn with the back of her hand. When she realized he'd caught her at it, she waved off the concern written on his face, reaching forward feebly to pull the textbook off his lap. "Is it so unbelievable that I might have forgotten something? I mean, the sheer volume of drugs in my system could bring down a full grown werewolf. The fact that I even have my eyes open is a feat of strength."

Stiles knew she was right and his heart broke all over again, understanding he could do literally nothing to help her right now. The diagnosis of cancer had devastated them. The revelation that the cancer, supernatural in origin with Stiles' own mother ultimately responsible for the spell echo currently well on its way to killing his girlfriend, had almost been too much to shoulder.

"Nope," Stiles replied. He leaned forward and tapped her temple with his index finger. "This here is a steel trap."

Lydia shooed his hand away. "More like a sieve these days."

"Ha! I actually know what that is."

Lydia smiled. "Glad to know Scott's Word-A-Day calendar is elevating the collective vocabulary of the whole pack."

Usually humor helped. Stiles would quip something stupid or sarcastic, throw around vaguely self-deprecating jokes, and Lydia would at the least shake her head with a twinkle in her eyes giving herself away. They built an easy routine of laughter and tears, humor and homework, tests and procedures and so very much sleep.

But they were coming to a breaking point. If the cancer didn't kill her, the treatments for the cancer would.

Lydia yawned a second time and Stiles closed his book and started the process of moving their homework from her bed to the chair in the corner. Most of the time at this point Lydia started protesting and threatened to hit him with things if he didn't stop babying her. Stiles knew things were desperately declining when she sighed with relief and settled back into the pillows instead.

She grimaced slightly as she shifted herself enough for Stiles to climb into bed with her. The hospital staff had stopped trying to keep them out of the same bed. He pulled the blankets up around them though the room was almost unbearably hot to him. Lydia shivered as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back against his chest. It worried him that her tiny frame felt like bones wrapped in skin and little else.

Stiles started to drift in and out of sleep. Lydia spoke up, startling him. "We shouldn't fall asleep. Deaton and Dr. Nelson will be here soon."

"Mmhmm," he replied, burrowing his face into the back of her neck. Despite all the medicine and the hospital soap and blankets, right here, in this little spot, Lydia still smelled like Lydia.

"Stiles, I'm serious," she continued, pinching his arm lightly to get a real response.

He was awake. He felt conflicted about this Dr. Nelson person though and he would much rather avoid the situation for a bit longer if they could.

Lydia pressed her read back into his hips and he barely smothered a groan. "Mean," he grumbled into her hair. "Totally evil."

"I have your attention though, don't I?"

Stiles slid the lower half of his body away from her, forcing some space between them while simultaneously pressing a kiss to the back of her neck. "Always."

Lydia started to roll to face him and Stiles helped, making sure none of her various wires and such tangled. When she'd settled again, she reached forward and brushed a few stray strands of hair off his forehead. "I can't believe how fast your hair grows," she said with a sad smile. He and the others in the pack had all shaved their heads for her not long ago. He already needed a trim. It was why he'd always kept it buzzed off as a kid. Much easier maintenance.

"What can I say," he replied with a smirk. "Puny human skills."

Lydia tucked her hand back under her chin and stared up at him, thinking. He knew her thinking face anywhere and he never interrupted her if he could help it. Even though he suspected he didn't want to hear those thoughts, he gave her the time she needed to find the words.

"Whatever it is, I have to do it," she finally said in a small voice. The sound matched the diminutive form from which it came, which in itself was strange as Lydia's voice always reverberated larger than life.

"You really think it's a good idea to make sweeping declarations like that?" he asked. "I mean, what if the solution requires a blood sacrifice or something?"

Lydia raised an eyebrow.

Stiles shrugged. "It wouldn't be the first druid ritual to call for blood."

"Okay, as long as it doesn't require anyone else to die for me, I have to do it."

They didn't know what _it_ was yet. Deaton only ever vaguely answered their questions when it came to possible ways to undo the spell causing her cancer.

A soft knock at the door prompted Stiles to slip out of bed to answer it.

Melissa McCall gave Stiles a half-smile and pushed into the room to check Lydia's vitals before letting in Deaton and a petite, blonde-haired woman.

Deaton strode forward and shook Stiles' hand which felt formal, considering the circumstances. It made him feel more awkward than usual.

"Stiles, Lydia, I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Moira Nelson," Deaton said, gesturing to his companion. She smiled a little and nodded to each of them. "She's going to do her best to help us get out of this situation."

"How exactly?" Stiles asked, already fidgeting from side to side, trying not to pace. It drove Lydia crazy when he paced in the small room but fighting the urge to so felt like trying not to breathe, possible but painful and not recommended for long periods of time.

Dr. Nelson clasped her hands in front of her and all Stiles could see as the woman began to speak were her bright red fingernails. "Right now, your abilities as a banshee are tied to the power reservoirs of the nemeton. We can't separate you from that power source without causing you harm."

"Well then _that's_ not an option," Stiles interjected.

"Which is why," the doctor went on, turning to look at Stiles for the first time since she'd entered the room. "We will disconnect Lydia from her abilities first."

After a moment of stunned silence in which Stiles tried to process this information, Lydia spoke up. "I wouldn't be a banshee anymore?"

"You would still be a banshee by blood, but by ability…you'd be perfectly human."

Stiles finally found his voice at this. "Will they come back? Her abilities, would she get them back?"

Dr. Nelson pursed her lips for a moment before answering. "It's possible they'll come back in a changed form. But yes, it's also possible they won't return at all."

* * *

Isaac Lahey had known this conversation was coming for a while. He'd felt it in Allison's hesitance to touch him, in her quiet words and inability to make eye contact with him. Something about Allison irreversibly changed during her ordeal on the other side. She'd refused to talk to him about her battle with her aunt Kate, outside of telling him they'd fought one another for control of her body and she'd won. He'd tried not to press her for details but the more time passed, the more he knew she was leaving something out.

When Isaac spoke to Scott about it, the Alpha werewolf assumed Allison's eccentricities were attributed to the face that she'd basically banished her aunt to the abyss. He explained that while Kate had been a total basket case, she and Allison possessed a special familial bond. Allison loved Kate. Having to kill her beloved family member took a toll on her. Isaac deferred to Scott's knowledge, knowing nothing could be done about it now. Kate was gone and Allison lived, working through her feelings while healing physically.

Lydia assured him this was normal too. When Allison dealt with her mother's death, she cut everyone out of her life then as well. Allison mourned alone. When she was hurting, she had no emotional space to accommodate a relationship. It wasn't personal and when she felt capable of engaging with a person again, she'd likely come back to him, ready and whole.

Knowing these things, conferring with two of the people who knew her best, still didn't prepare him for her to actually say the words.

It was the evening of her release, finally. The doctors couldn't explain why her injuries took so long to heal. Of course the pack knew it was because the damage occurred on another plane of existence but they couldn't reveal this to the medical staff.

With the last of the paperwork signed and her discharge instructions in hand, Isaac followed behind Allison and her father, carrying the small tote of belongings she'd managed to accumulate from home.

"Hey Dad, wait a sec," Allison said as they reached the front doors. "Could you take this to the car? I need to talk to Isaac."

Chris Argent took the suitcase from Isaac with a knowing grimace and Isaac knew then their fate was sealed.

"You're breaking up with me, aren't you?" he asked as Chris disappeared around the corner.

Allison sighed and crossed her arms. In a rare move, she actually made eye contact with him for once. "Look, I need some time, okay?"

His stomach turned over. There was nothing he could do. "Time?"

She shrugged. "And space. I just…can't be involved with you right now."

"Do you still love me?" he asked, not actually wanting to know the answer.

"Don't do that," she answered, her face darkening. "Don't make this worse than it already is, okay? This is about me, not about us."

"But it affects me too," he countered, his wolf becoming restless within him. "Breaking up with me isn't just about you."

Allison threw her hands up and turned to leave. Isaac took a few steps forward and grabbed her arm, enough to ask her to stop. She tensed at his touch but for once he didn't immediately let go.

She turned to him slowly with a resigned look on her face. "Look Isaac. I'm going through some adjustments, okay?" she said, placing a hand on his cheek. "You're a good guy. You really are. But I need some time. Can you give me that?"

And of course he could. He would. He had to. He'd give her anything she needed, no matter how much it hurt. He nodded because the words wouldn't come and she leaned up on her toes to kiss his cheek. Then she left, walking briskly into the night and out of his life.

The moment he could no longer see her, fury rose up in Isaac's chest, threatening to overwhelm him. He'd never complained. He was an orphan, a werewolf, had lost an arm and packmates and somehow he managed to hold himself together. While he indulged often in dark humor, making light of the losses he'd suffered, he never truly complained or lamented the hand he'd been dealt.

This might be his breaking point. He started walking with no clear idea of his destination. Home was only a few miles from the hospital but he wasn't ready to call it a night. He just needed to walk.

The wolf within him fought for release. It pushed at his edges, begging him to budge. With hands balled into fists, he stalked down the road, palms wet with blood from claws he could no longer keep in their place.

He never heard the motorcycle.

The sound of his own heart thumping, blood rushing in his ears, masked the noise as the motorcycle overtook him. The sting of the dart hitting his shoulder caught his attention though, prompting him to freeze as the motorcycle shot past him and skidded to a stop, turning with a loud squeal to face him, rider's face hidden by the dark face mask of a helmet.

Isaac pulled the dart from his shoulder without taking his eyes off the motorcycle. He felt the wolfsbane pulsing through him in a dose that should have knocked him entirely off his feet. After the hellish amount of the herb he'd managed to survive while fighting the leshy, he'd discovered himself more or less immune to the substance now.

The culprit on the motorcycle didn't seem aware of this, waiting for him to fall to the ground, an action that was not going to happen.

 _This is exactly what I need right now_ , he thought as he crouched, extending his claws and growling at the threat before him. _A distraction_.

Once the rider realized Isaac wasn't going down, he switched tactics. The bike started toward him again but the rider now had a baton of some sort held firmly in his right hand. Isaac sprang toward the rider as the bike raced toward him, intending to tackle him to the ground and rip him apart only to be hit by the baton and its associated electrical voltage, enough to kill a bull and definitely enough to stun a teenage werewolf.

Isaac hit the ground with a thud, paralyzed as tremors wracked his body. The motorcycle stopped and its rider got off, baton still in hand. Rather than shock him again, a heavy boot swung toward his face and everything went black as the rider kicked him into unconsciousness.

" _I took a step hoping you might follow, if you don't get it then you don't get it." Five for Fighting "What If"_

* * *

A/N: Welcome to the sequel folks! If you haven't read Moving in the Dark, it's in your best interest to go back and read that story first. While there is a little recap throughout to remind everyone of where we left off, you may be lost if you've never read the first story.

This sequel is one I'd planned for a long time. I almost started on it immediately after concluding MitD but I needed to let it marinate a bit. I'm thankful I did because the direction the story is going in now is a much more exciting one. Thank you very much for reading. I'll be waiting anxiously for reviews or PMs to know what you guys think so far.

Luca


	2. Chapter 2

When Darkness Comes

Lucawindmover

Chapter Two

Shadows

" _You were the shadow to my light. Did you feel us?" Alan Walker_

* * *

Melissa McCall pushed through the back door into the kitchen, her arms laden with her work bag and purse, the jacket she hadn't needed with the warm weather tossed over her shoulder. Listening for the tell-tale sounds of teenagers, she hesitated before dropping her things on the bench by the door. Straining against the unusual silence, she kicked off her shoes and deposited her keys on the counter.

"Isaac?" she called into the stillness. She received no answer.

Curious, she jogged up the stairs, bare feet padding softly on the hardwood, and peeked into the first room on the left to find it empty. This was the space she and Scott had put together for Isaac when they first invited him to live with them. Gone was the extra army cot for Ethan, the futon from the office in its place instead, the card table replaced with an actual desk they'd found at a yard sale. The room, clean and tidy considering it housed two teenaged boys, only smelling faintly of gym socks and body spray.

Melissa's brow furrowed as she continued down the hall, knowing she'd find Scott and Cora's room empty as well. Scott texted her before she left the hospital to let her know he and Cora were going to dinner with his father. Melissa's insides squirmed at the thought of Scott rekindling a relationship with his father, especially since he now possessed so many secrets. She would never get between them though and she told him she hoped it went well. Having spent some time with Cora lately, however, she suspected the meal would not go as planned.

Once back downstairs, she knocked on Derek's door, the room once Rafael's office and then her own. After a moment of silence, Melissa understood Derek was absent as well. He usually answered otherwise.

The empty house was incredibly unusual. Melissa didn't quite know what to do with herself. She wrapped her arms around her middle and made her way back to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. Perhaps she would drink a couple cups in peace and settle down with a good book. She knew she could nail the coffee part but convincing her brain to calm down long enough to focus on reading would be a considerable issue.

She needed to talk to Isaac.

Melissa took her role as a nurse at Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital seriously. She'd taken the Nightingale Pledge, an oath for nurses comparable to a doctor's Hippocratic Oath, in which she promised to do no harm and to keep her patients' secrets. Only once in her career did she have an issue with the first portion, when caring for a death row inmate. Keeping confidential information under wraps had become a challenge since her inclusion in the Beacon Hills supernatural community but nothing had prepared her for the secret she now kept.

Allison Argent was pregnant.

The pregnancy test had been one on a list of others to do as Allison was admitted to surgery. The tests gave the doctors the clearest possible picture of why Allison's body reacted the way it did to her injuries.

Melissa had stared at the results, dumbfounded. Had these two teenagers not already been pulled through the ringer? She reasoned that Isaac was the father of Allison's baby as she couldn't be more than four or five weeks along. Melissa needed details and wanted to speak with Isaac to discover whether or not he knew of the pregnancy. Of course she couldn't just tell him because that would definitely violate Allison's privacy and while medical secrets hadn't been entirely sacred lately, Melissa knew this particular secret was not hers to tell.

Isaac had left the hospital before her and had yet to arrive. I wasn't unusual for the kids to do things outside the house so she tried not to concentrate on that too much.

Settled at the dining room table with a mug of coffee and a new book from the library, Melissa had begun to read when the back door unceremoniously flew open, revealing an agitated Stiles in the doorway.

"Why sure Stiles, come on in," Melissa said, closing her book and clasping her hands on the table.

Stiles paused, blinking, and looked back over his shoulder where he could clearly see the empty driveway through the open garage door. "Oh. No one's home."

"Am I no one now?"

Stiles shook his head and closed the door. "That's not what I meant."

Melissa smiled. "I know what you meant," she replied. "Is there someone in particular you're looking for?"

"Well I had hoped Scott would be here," he said, slumping into a high-backed chair across the table from her. "I swear sometimes tracking that kid down is freaking impossible for us not-werewolf types."

"He and Cora are having dinner with his father," Melissa said. She took a sip of her coffee in an attempt to mask her aggravation. Stiles knew her too well for that to work.

He groaned and leaned the chair back on two legs. "Cora's brooding Hale silences punctuated with sarcastic remarks? Agent McCall's gonna love that."

Melissa smirked. She agreed but she was also trying to be supportive, even if it gave her an ulcer to do so. "Is there something I can help you with instead? I mean, I know I'm no Alpha werewolf but I've been known to be useful on occasion."

"You know, maybe you _can_ help," Stiles replied, dropping his chair back down on all fours. "It's about Lydia."

"I'd guessed as much," she said. "What's the word on the ritual?"

Stiles grimaced. "We have to take her out to the Nemeton."

Melissa groaned and reached up to rub her temples. "Stiles, it'll be really dangerous to move her in her condition right now. Her immune system is shot, you know that."

"Oh, I know it. Believe me, I know. Probably better than most," Stiles said. He threw his hands in the air for emphasis. "But what am I supposed to do? Dr. Nelson says it's necessary. We have to separate her from her banshee powers and the Nemeton."

"Do you have to do both things at the same time?" she asked. "Do you have to do both in the woods?"

Stiles paused, thinking. "I don't know actually. Maybe the rituals can be broken up somehow. Buy ourselves some time before we have to take her outside."

With an exaggerated sigh, Stiles put his head down on the table. Melissa reached across the space and ruffled his hair affectionately. "We're going to figure this out. And we're going to do it in a way that poses the least danger to Lydia, okay? I promise."

Both Stiles and Melissa jumped as the back door opened again. Ethan pushed through first with Danny right behind him, both sporting looks of panic.

"What's wrong?" Stiles asked, immediately jumping to his feet and sending his chair screeching backwards on the tile floor.

"Has anyone heard from Isaac?" Danny asked as he stepped around his boyfriend, folding his arms across his chest.

Melissa shook her head, an anxious knot building in her stomach.

"What's wrong?" Stiles asked again. He waved his hand in Ethan's direction as if to get his attention. The werewolf ignored him, focusing instead on Melissa, the mother of his Alpha and the woman largely considered the den mother these days.

"We dropped by the hospital to visit Lydia and caught a blood trail," Ethan said. "Isaac's blood."

Before Melissa could process this Stiles rounded the table and grabbed Ethan's arm, earning him a scowl from the werewolf that was largely ignored. "Where did the trail go?"

Danny fidgeted, shooting a worried glance at Stiles before answering the question. "Nowhere. It went nowhere."

* * *

Each and every evening the sun set hard on Derek Hale. The night weighed heavily on his shoulders, filled his mind with troubles, his heart with pain.

He leaned back on his elbows, his legs hanging off the edge of the dilapidated porch of his ruined ancestral home. His eyes always found the disturbed area of earth not far from where he sat, underneath which his uncle would remain forever. Peter Hale had been troubled, mentally unstable from his years in a coma following the burning of the hale house. He had been maniacal, calculating, cold…family.

And Derek had killed him. Twice.

He held no issue with his uncle's first death. Peter had fought back, had gone down swinging in fact. Crazy with power and on the verge of exposing them all to the rest of Beacon Hills with his brazen disregard for human life, he'd been a beast that needed to be put down.

The second time…Derek didn't know. Perhaps Peter's death had been inevitable. The fact that his uncle had needed ending twice didn't bother him as much as the manner of his death did. Derek had fought dirty, betrayed his uncle in a moment of weakness, dispatched him unfairly, pulled his heart from his chest while he and everyone else in the Nemeton's clearing couldn't move.

A crackling of leaves along the drive up to the house caught his attention and Derek's brow furrowed as he watched none other than Allison Argent stroll up the hill toward the house. He pushed himself up to sitting with a frown.

"Your face is going to stick that way someday," Allison called as she trudged past Peter's grave, slowly making her way up to the porch. She climbed the few rickety steps and flopped down next to him, rotting beams protesting how quickly she dropped.

Derek could hear her labored breathing from the trek up the hill. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead in the starlight, the moon having not rising just yet. She was accompanied, as always, by a slight scent of death. All the other werewolves noticed this as well. The sickly sweet odor hadn't left her since she came back from the other side. Deaton seemed to think it was a side effect of having almost died on another plane. No one else could explain it.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked, ignoring her comment.

Allison glanced at him out of the corner of her eye before shrugging and turning her attention to the sky.

They sat in relative silence for a while, the sounds of the night growing around them as the darkness deepened, Derek studying Allison while she studied the stars.

"A picture would last longer you know."

Derek sighed and turned away, uncomfortable. "Was there something you wanted?"

She didn't answer immediately, crossing her arms over her stomach and looking towards Peter's grave instead. "Company."

Derek scoffed. "You don't have better friends for that?"

"Not ones who understand what I've been through."

"And I do?" he asked.

"Yes," Allison answered definitively. "You know what it's like."

"To die?"

"To kill," she replied. "A family member."

Derek opened his mouth to respond and stopped. He turned and studied her face with greater interest. He knew she hadn't said much about her experience with Kate on the other side. Few details had escaped her and he now understood why. There were lines etched into her countenance that weren't there before, a hardness she'd never possessed until her encounter with her aunt.

He shook his head and looked away. "If you think I can help you, you're wrong," he said softly. "There's no helping this."

"I'm not looking for help," Allison replied, her eyes turning back to the sky. "Like I said before, I'm just here for company."

Derek had nothing to say to that. If she wanted to sit next to him and feel sorry for herself the way he felt sorry for himself, who was he to judge? They sat in silence for a little while longer before the quiet was broken by Allison's ringing phone.

She frowned at the intrusion, the expression darkening upon seeing the caller's name. "Melissa?" she answered, turning her eyes to Derek who could hear both sides of the conversation.

"Allison, do you know where Isaac is?"

"I left him at the hospital," she answered. "Why?"

There was a long pause on the other side before Melissa continued. "You're gonna want to get to the house. I think we're going to need all hands on deck."

* * *

"No, Scott," Cora shouted as she stormed down the sidewalk. He tried to grab her by the elbow but she ripped her arm out of his grasp without even slowing down.

"Would you please just stop?" he asked, practically jogging to keep up with her brisk pace. She wanted to put as much space between herself and that stupid restaurant as possible.

After another few steps though, she froze in her tracks so fast Scott almost ran into her. "What?"

Scott stepped in front of her, pinning her with a desperate look. "Can we please talk about this?" he begged. He reached out for her but upon seeing her darkening expression, he must have thought better of it because he dropped his hands to his sides.

"Talk about what?" she asked, crossing her arms and planting her feet. "About how you managed to go back on every _single_ promise you made to me going in there?"

Cora watched s Scott sputtered but he didn't have a leg to stand on and he knew it.

The dinner had been a disaster from the beginning. Agent McCall looked down his nose at her jeans and leather jacket, distrust written on his features. The sharp tang of fear in the air was a small consolation once the man opened his mouth. Between questions about school and jobs and living situations, Scott couldn't seem to find the truth if it had been sitting square on his nose. Cora had endured the meal with grinding teeth and clenched fists right until the word girlfriend left Scott's lips. That was it. She'd had enough. With a screech of her chair catching the attention of everyone in the restaurant, Cora stomped out of the room.

"I don't know how to do this, Cora. I just don't," Scott finally managed, his shoulders slumping.

"You don't know how to do what?" she countered. "Be honest?"

"Be a mate," he answered. "I have no idea how to be a mate."

Cora didn't know how, either. She hadn't known any other couples in her life who had been mated. Her mother had been a werewolf married to a human, so mating couldn't happen. The only other Alphas she'd known had ben her brother, for a short time, and the Alpha in the pack who'd raised her and he had never taken a mate. Cora had more or less forgotten that mating was a thing. No wonder she and Scott were so bad at this. Neither of them grew up with any examples of how they should behave.

She sighed, relaxing her stance a fraction. "Look, I don't know how to do this any better than you do, okay?"

Scott looked down at his feet. "I'm sorry, you know. For the way this night went."

Cora stepped forward and reached out to touch his chin, bringing his eyes up to hers. "I know. I don't doubt that."

"What do you doubt?" he asked. "Because I can tell you doubt something."

"It's not doubt really."

"Then what is it?"

Cora furrowed her brow, trying to find the right words for it. "I don't know."

Scott smiled his crooked smile. He lifted his hand to trace his thumb down her jaw, sending flames licking along her spine in the process. "Tell me when you do?"

She didn't smile but she knew he could tell she wanted to.

They were interrupted by Scott's phone going off in his pocket. Cora feared it would be his father, calling to yell at them for abandoning him in the middle of their meal.

Scott frowned and answered. "Stiles? What's up, buddy?"

"We think Isaac might be missing," Stiles said. Cora could hear him and frowned, watching Scott's worried expression.

Within moments, she and Scott hopped on his motorcycle, speeding along darkened streets to the address Stiles had given them on the phone. Once they crossed Isaac's blood trail it was easy to follow along to the right location. The jeep was parked on the side of the road, a group of teenagers gathered around it, talking in low tones.

Cora jumped off the back of the bike as it stopped, pulling of her helmet so she could better hear the conversation.

"What I don't understand is why he left the hospital, bleeding," Stiles said as Cora walked up. He turned his attention to Allison. "Did you do something to him?"

Allison crossed her arms. "What could I have done to him to make him bleed?"

"You have knives," Ethan offered. "And you guys used to spar a lot."

"Does it look like I'm in sparring condition to you?"

"The thing that gets me," Danny interjected. "Is why he would _leave_ the hospital if he was bleeding. Wouldn't he have stayed to get help?"

Scott joined them, scenting the air. "I think we have bigger problems than whatever Isaac's injury is," he said. Cora could feel his anxiety travel the invisible link between them and it stood the fine hairs on the back of her neck on end. "I can smell fear. A lot of fear. And it's Isaac's."

"Why does the trail stop here?" Cora asked. The copper taste of blood in the air made her insides squirm uncomfortably.

"I think someone on a motorcycle picked him up," Stiles said as he squatted down, pointing to the disturbed soil on the edge of the street. "I mean, that's what it looks like based on the tracks."

Cora watched the muscle twitch in Scott's uneven jaw. He was thinking, processing. It didn't take him as long as it used to, this formulating of plans.

"Okay, Stiles. Call your dad. I think we should investigate this from both normal and supernatural angles," Scott said before turning to Allison. "Could you get your dad on this too? He might know who would want to take Isaac."

Allison nodded uncertainly. Cora wrinkled her nose. She abhorred her proximity to Allison. The girl always smelled faintly like a rotting corpse these days. It was a disconcerting odor to have to be around.

As the rest of the pack piled into the jeep to head back to the McCall house, Scott and Cora took off in the direction of the hospital. Cora's body shook with the force of Scott's nervous energy. Isaac wasn't the weakest among them by any means but he was still adjusting to having only one arm at his disposal. If he had been hurt….there would be hell to pay.

Someone out there had taken their packmate and they weren't going to get away with it.

" _Another star, You fade away. Afraid our aim is out of sight." Alan Walker "Fade Away"_

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A/N: Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed the first chapter! My updates are probably going to be slow as I'm working full time and have the kiddos and all. That said, I am usually working on this story in some capacity every day so I appreciate your patience.

I would like to thank Suna-Puppet-Master for bringing to my attention that in the previous chapter I refer to Isaac as having "hands" plural. It was asked if perhaps Isaac had regrown his lost arm. He has not. I'll be going back to work on that scene and make it clear he has only the one arm. Out of habit I used plurals. I love the question and the catch. I don't know what I would do without you guys.


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